July, 2025

By Matt Silver

If we weren’t part of your life, there’d be no sense in asking. But we know that we are; we see you, we hear you, we know you. And you know us.

That’s rare these days, in the era of Amazon and digitally delivered entertainments. If we’re old fashioned, it’s not in the manner of mustachioed hipster bartenders who call themselves “mixologists.” Rather, it’s in the spirit of Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer and John Coltrane. We won’t be held hostage by the political fads and fixations of the moment. After 50-plus years, we, like Kern and Mercer, know that this year’s fancies are passing fancies.

How are we so confident? Because we have you.

Jazz 88ers,

KSDS is facing an emergency, and we need your help. You already know the broad strokes. Federal funding’s gone. More specifically, we will be without $200,000 we were relying on to operate. We still need it; it's just not coming. 

This "Now's the Time" campaign is not a membership drive. Membership drives are doctor’s visits you make even when you’re well, to stay well. This is more akin to emergency surgery… without insurance.

The only political candidate in which this all-jazz-and-blues public radio station has ever taken any interest is Dizzy Gillespie. And, even then, we waited 60 years before issuing an official endorsement — you know, just to be safe. Pictured here: Charles McPherson (center) at KSDS studios with Ron Dhanifu (left) and Matt Silver (right) ahead of Oct. 2024’s “Dizzy for President” concert, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Gillespie’s tongue-in-cheek run for POTUS.

By Matt Silver

Lots of consternation this week. Both bodies of congress have voted to rescind previously approved funding packages to public radio and television broadcasters. To be sure, the rescission package is politically motivated, a response to government funded news coverage and reporting that those behind this legislation would argue has been politically motivated for quite some time. Reasonable people can differ over how much merit, if any, that kind of critique contains when directed towards the newsgathering and reporting practices of NPR and PBS, the two public broadcasters with the broadest national reach. 

The unfortunate part is that that critique — and the subsequent legislative manifestation of that critique — has nothing to do with the dozens of independent public broadcasters that, like KSDS, don’t provide any political coverage of any kind.

By Matt Silver

You ever have a stretch of days where everything — every task, every responsibility, every obligation whether big or small — just feels way harder, way more fraught with obstacles and landmines than it ought to?

Hi there, Matt Silver of KSDS coming to you from our innovation labs here on the campus of San Diego City College with good news and bad. Here’s the bad: despite our best efforts, time travel remains only theoretically possible at this time. Decreased government funding of public media has all but guaranteed that our time machine development project won’t be ready for the next pledge drive. 

The good news is that here at KSDS, we’re mighty resourceful.

Saxophonist, composer, and arranger Jack Montrose, pictured here in 1954. His arrangements would be recorded that year by ensembles led by Chet Baker and Clifford Brown. Photo by William Claxton.

By Matt Silver

A man with talent wants the world. Even if he’s too modest or mannered to announce it aloud, or to himself, there’s a part of him that sees one possible future where everything breaks his way. But what does such a man deserve? Maybe it’s fair, if harsh, to say that he doesn’t deserve anything. That no one deserves anything. But if you’ve some combination of natural talent, acquired skill, and the nerve to open yourself to the world’s judgment, all you can really ask for is a window of a few years to show what you’re capable of, come what may.